Present invention relates to computer processor, and more particularly to a system and method for testing whether a computer processor is capable of executing a requested instruction set.
Hardware architectures are continually evolving. For example, the IBM z/Architecture has its roots in the System/360, announced in 1964, and has been continually evolving. The most recent upgrade to z/Architecture includes more than 100 new CPU instructions, most of them designed to provide better execution performance to application programs. Many other computer processor architectures follow a similar evolution path.
Such new facilities present a problem to software product developers: it is not possible for software products to easily exploit the new facilities. Shortly after a new facility is announced, most of the installed machines will be older versions of the architecture and thus, unable to run software that uses the new facility. Any software product that has the new version of architecture as prerequisite will have a very small market. Only after some time (a few years) will most of the installed machines support the new instructions.